Winter
by MissFirecracker
Summary: When Lizzie's grandfather dies, will her family be able to hold it together? PLEASE R/R. *CHAPTER TWO ADDED*
1. Default Chapter

Disclaimers: Lizzie McGuire, all characters, yada yada, does not belong to me. Trust me, if it did, I would not be doing this right now.  
  
Chapter One  
  
"Hello," Lizzie McGuire chirped, picking up the phone on the third ring, "this is Lizzie."  
"Hi, Lizzie," a vaguely familiar voice responded, "it's your aunt Carolyn. Could you get your mother for me? It's very important."  
"Uh... okay?" Lizzie answered, slightly confused. Carolyn hadn't talked to her mother for seven years, why was it so important to talk to her now? "MOM! PHONE!" Lizzie yelled up the stairs.  
"Coming!" Jo yelled back. She sauntered down the stairs.  
"It's Aunt Carolyn," Lizzie explained in a whisper. Jo sighed in frustration.  
"Hello, Carolyn. Oh. Um. Wow. Okay. Yeah. We'll be up there as soon as we can get there. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Mm-hmm. See you there. Bye." Jo slammed the phone into the cradle and stomped to the couch, collapsing onto it.  
Lizzie gnawed her lip nervously. "Mom? What's wrong?"  
"Your grandfather's dead." 


	2. Chapter One

"Are you going to be okay?" Sam asks his wife.  
"Drive," Jo answers stubbornly.  
"I'm at a red light, honey," he responds , trying to be gentle.  
"Not anymore." She punches the radio buttons, stopping at completely random stations, most of which suck.  
Sam sighs again. "Are you sure you're going to be okay?"  
"I'm fine. I've never been fucking better," she hisses. He looks at her, but she's staring at her hands, avoiding his glance.  
"Honey..." he falters. She's staring out the window now, sniffling slightly. Matt kicks the back of her seat, but she doesn't turn around and snap at him like she usually would. They pull into what used to be her parents' driveway. Used to be. Before they all went and died on her.  
"I need to go in alone. Quick. Just to see whose here. If Mark isn't here, or isn't coming, which he should be, but... then we're going home," she murmurs delicately. She saunters into the house, her vision still slightly blurred. She's not going in without her brother, mainly because her sister is a complete bitch.  
"Is Mark here?" she asks her cousin Helen. The house is pretty crowded, but not much is going on. It's basically a bunch of dismal-looking people, sitting on the carpet or sofa and moping. The rain starts to trickle down as Helen looks for Mark in the kitchen. He's sitting on the counter, talking to someone Jo doesn't recognize.  
"Oh, god," Mark says, sauntering over to her, "how are you?"  
"Thank god you're here," Jo murmurs, leaning onto the counter. Rain pummels the window behind her. Mark hugs her tightly and she exhales.  
"Are your people okay with it?" he asks, running his hands through his hair.  
"They're fine. I'm not. I'm losing it," she mumbles, "or at least on the verge of doing so." She hops up on the counter, kicking the dishwasher with her heels like she used to do when she was little.  
Mark sighs, "Grace is here. Charming the dysfunctional Carters in a way that only Grace can." They laugh a little, then stop, like they're not supposed to laugh. It was harder when their mother died, she was more of a mother to them than he was a father to them. He was just there, talking around them and not directly to them, giving them complexes about god-knows- what.  
"We're never going to be able to say what we want to him. We're never going to tell him that he was a shitty father, Jo," Mark realizes.  
"Maybe he already knows," Grace says from behind them. She places a manicured hand on Mark's shoulder. "Am I interrupting this?"  
"No, it's fine. We're hiding from them," Jo whispers. "You're not a them." The wallpaper is orange-flowered, the room is badly lit. It feels so small, so cramped. They sigh collectively, then laugh a little, stopping abruptly like before. It feels wrong to be happy, because that's what's traditional. The only thing the Carters have managed to be traditional about is grieving. When someone dies, you grieve, whether they ruined your childhood or not. 


	3. Chapter Two

"I can't do this anymore," Jo sighs, tracing the edge of the table with her finger.  
"It's been three months. I thought you got over that," Sam responds. He sips his coffee gently, and she sighs again.  
"Only it's not that," she announces, pausing. "I'm not happy anymore. I don't get anything out of my life. I don't have any control. I'm leaving. Because what I do isn't all that complicated, anyone else can do it. Your new typist, whom you adore so very much, can do it for all I care. All you have to do is cart kids around in a mini-van and make shitty dinners and not put any effort in and be unhappy forever and wish you could be doing something else."  
"Can't you talk to someone about this? And who said I adored my typist?" he responds, a little confused. He never knew. He never knew because he never cared about her, and she's put up with this fact for too long.  
"I've been seeing a therapist since I was twelve, Sam," she exhales carefully, "and don't pull that 'who said insert valid statement here' shit with me. I'm sure you and her have a lot of fun on those long, lonely nights at the office."  
He doesn't respond, so she continues, "I found an apartment in Los Angeles, by Mark's, so that I can be near someone who actually cares."  
"When?" he asks.  
"Last Thursday."  
"Why didn't you tell me?"  
"You didn't come home from work that night," she answers flatly. "I need to leave now, I'm sorry." I tear drips off her chin as she pushes open the door of the café and slides into her black Volvo. She hesitates for a minute, then lurches out of the parking lot behind a beige Lincoln, smearing mascara onto her cheeks.  
  
************************  
  
Three days later, she sits in her cubicle, waiting for something. She doesn't know what. The radio yammers softly in the background; her eyes are starting to water from staring at her computer so long. She slurps down the rest of her coffee and glares at the clock.  
"What's the point?" she breathes as she stands up to get another coffee. 


End file.
